


out of kilter

by Handful_of_Silence



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Experimentation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 12:33:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4435670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Handful_of_Silence/pseuds/Handful_of_Silence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt remembers how it was, those first weeks. How there was just too much of the world. What it was like to be in the dark and afraid.</p>
<p>Matt wouldn't have wanted that for anyone. But not Foggy. Never Foggy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	out of kilter

It is only after his fury has burned itself through down into a familiar angry grief that he finds time to listen to the tapes that that monster made. They arrive a couple of  days after that bastard that the media had dubbed the Bullseye Killer went smirking and gleeful into police custody. Addressed to him in a stuffed A4 envelope, a braille sticker slicked onto the front under where the address scrawled in ballpoint is imprinted.

  _just a little present, matty-boy, for the curious. seemed the least i could do. till next time. ta-ta for now!_ _,_ it reads. When Matt had first brushed his fingertips over it, still crackling with nerves worn from the ambient chaos of the hospital, from the justice and vengeance he hasn’t yet been granted , he’d hurled the envelope into a draw and sworn never to give that man the satisfaction.

A week on, tired and frustrated and grieving for things lost because he wasn’t fast enough, and he’s never been as strong as he’s wanted to be.

_knew you couldn’t resist,_ mocks the sticker pressed onto the top flap.

\--

The first side of the tape is rambling.

 “ _I want to get inside your head, Matty-boy,_ _”_ sighs the giddy voice of Lester Benjamin.   _I want to know what made you. So many secrets and I know them all but this one. I want to understand you, you see. What made you. I want to be the only one who can understand you, because only I can appreciate how special you are. Blessed by the angels, Devil-man, and I know that I’m the one that’s destined to bring you down. It’ll be beautiful, poetic almost, like a shot fired dead centre. You’ll have heard about all the others in the news I presume, but that was just for practice. Building up to my piece de resistance. I’m going to make you my masterpiece, Matty-boy, and it’s all for you.”_

The next side is nothing short of horrific.

\--

A hissing whistle, and a dull click.

 “… _I thought I should make these tapes for you to hear afterwards. At first, I thought it was so I could document my process, have an audio record of how the experiments are progressing chronologically, et-cet-erah, et-cet-erah, but I was mulling it through the ol’ brainpan and thought – Lester, buddy, how will the Devil be able to truly appreciate your work if he doesn’t understand how hard you’ve been pushing yourself to bring him down? How many hours researching the formula that blinded little Matty Murdock, how many times you’ve tried and tried and tried to perfect its effects. How many sleepless nights that  devil  o’ yours has caused, thinking about all of this, and about him, and the look on his face when he realises what you’ve done.”_

The tape jumps, as though it’s been poorly edited.

A dragging sound, catching on the ground. Heavy and being pulled away. Lester comes back up close to the microphone.

 “ _That was Michelle. Bye Michelle! She’s what scientists would call a “failed experiment” but hey-ho, I’m getting there. I’ll figure it out. I just need a few more test subjects, do a little bit of tweaking and then I’ll… well, I won’t spoil it. But you’ll thank me, Matty-boy. You’ll *love* it when you find out, I just know. It’ll be perfect.”_

_\--_

Matt listens to the brutal documentation of five failed experiments. Five people all grabbed off the street, from alleyways and parks, dog-walking and coming back from shift work. Five people he didn’t even know were gone until the police found them.

When Matt hears snatches of their voices,  the words hard to make out on the snap and crackle wear of the tape, they are terrified. Begging.

Every time, the formula that monster is working on is not quite right, and they all die shrieking, the world drawn dark in front of them, a burning agony on their face before a bullet cuts them off.

 “ _Oh well, back to the drawing board, ey Hornhead?”_  Lester muses calmly after the third victim gargles blood, the breath rattling in their throat for a moment and then making no sound at all.

Matt pauses the tape, and exhales harshly through his nose. Tugging his headphones out, rubbing his palms over the fabric on his upper legs to ground himself. He feels guilty, and sick, and the swig of cold coffee he just took is bitter and unpleasant on his tongue.

A small haired dog three floors up pads across the floor and laps at a nearly empty water bowl. A phone alarm goes off, the vibrate left on, and someone swears.

In Matt’s room, there is a pained whine forced through gritted teeth, muffled into the pillow. A heartbeat thunders, and then legs kick out restlessly, the body jerking with another broken startled sound as a siren whoops its way past.

Matt makes an effort to stand up as quietly as possible to head towards the noise. He won’t be listening to any more tonight.

\--

Three tapes in,  and he listens to that bastard’s savage breakthrough.

 “ _Oh god, it’s all dark,_ _”_ a new voice cries. Her name is Tamika. Karen had noticed a missing person’s poster stuck in the window of her family’s convenience store a couple of days before the police had connected her to the other four missing people. Foggy had turned the news up as they’d sat at Josie’s one night after work.

“You know anything about this?” he’d asked in a low voice, meaning did Daredevil know anything, and Matt had shook his head and tried not to think of the people he was failing.

“Not a thing,” he’d said, and Foggy had put a hand on his shoulder and murmured, “You can’t save them all buddy”. 

 “ _Shhh, sweetie, it’s ok.”_   Lester is further away from the microphone than usual.  “ _Just tell me, what’s it like?”_

  _“It hurts,”_  Tamika groans.

 “ _I know, I know. But tell me, help me out here. What do you feel?”_

His voice is awed and Matt is disgusted.

 “ _What have you..?,”_  Tamika sobs.  “ _Oh, it’s… what the fuck_ _have you done to me, I can feel.. there’s just so much....”_

  _“Perfect,”_  Lester sighs content before he puts a bullet in her brain. Matt supposes it’s a blessing, in some ways.

\--

“Why are you listening to that sick freak?” Karen whispers to him one day when she catches sight of the tape player on the coffee table.  She’s slipped on a pair of slippers that shush over the flooring rather than the clack of her usual heels. Pocketed her thin, jangly bracelet. She’s brought a bag with her that she sets down on the kitchen counter, unpacking rice and oats and pasta, the most flavourless foods she could find, and begins putting them away in Matt’s cupboards.

Matt’s in the kitchen area, stirring a sedative into a glass of purified water and making sure he doesn’t clatter the teaspoon against the sides. Listening to the noises coming from out of his room, the frightened jolting every time a car passes, a stifled sound uttered low in the throat as two blocks across, two siblings start screaming at each other about their late mother’s inheritance money.

There are two men who shouldn’t be able to hear it, but do, and it’s not the blessing either of them wanted it to be.

“I need to know what he did,” he says shortly, and wants her to drop it.

One of the siblings slams the door behind them as they leave. There is a gasp from Matt’s room.

It’s getting worse. Getting stronger.

“Look, I get it, ok?” Karen carries on. “But he’s done this to   _hurt_ you. They’ve locked that bastard away and I hope he rots in Rykers, but he’s sent you this because he knows you’ll listen. He wants you to listen, to get some sort of sick pleasure out of it, and you’re doing exactly what he wants…”

“Karen,” Matt says sharply, before he stops, swallows.

She’s right. Of course she is. The tapes, left behind for his ears only. Like some sort of warped validation of the things that man did.

He hates that he’s playing right into his hands.

“I need to know,” he repeats, his voice barely a whisper.

_\--_

  _“Oh boy oh boy oh boy, have I got a treat today! We’re finally here, you and me bud. Now the fun can really begin. Because you know, I was thinking. We both want the same thing, don’t we Matty-boy. Deep deep down, under all that aggression and pushing people away, we want someone who understands us. Who knows exactly where we’re coming from, why we do what we do. ‘Cept nobody does, do they? Even your friends, they don’t get how special you are, they don’t get it at all, do they Matty? They try, you’ve even let a few of them in on your secrets, but they don’t understand you, not like I do. Because what you need is an opposite. Someone to struggle against, a battle of wills against equals, and that’s what I’ll become. All this, it’s been for you. To learn about you, so that when we eventually meet, it’ll be perfect. But you’ve got all these ties, boyo. You won’t come after me, not properly, you won’t commit to our war until you lose all that. Until I show you how made for each other we can be, until I take something of yours and ruin it and return it, a gift to you, Matty-boy, just for you to show you all I’ve done in your name.”_

The microphone being jostled.

 “ _So with that in mind, let’s give our newcomer to the show a rousing welcome. We’ve been spending an awful lot of time together recently, it’s only right I should introduce you.”_

There is a cracking whine of feedback and corrupted tape, and Matt flinches as he listens.

 “ _C’mon honey, don’t be shy. We’re all friends here. Tell your name to the microphone.”_

A broken cry and quiet sniffling.

 “ _F-F-Franklin.”_

 “ _And why don’t you tell your ol’ pal Hornhead for posterity Fuh-fuh-fuh-Franklin, what a gift I’ve given you.”_

The voice cracks into a low sobbing.

\--

 “ _I’m a little disappointed you haven’t found me yet,”_  the recording segues into awkwardly. Matt knows there’s at least four days between the segments, maybe longer. He spent most of them in the mask, frantically hunting for the Bullseye Killer. Bruised knuckles and bad dreams and little else to show for it. The police hadn’t even tried to get in his way.   _“After all the effort I put into setting this up for you. Ah well. You’re a little slow, but you’ll get there. In the meantime, the things I’ve *learned* about your gifts. Franklin’s been invaluable, such a dear. I’m aware that his reactions are a little rawer, that he’s not had the time to adjust like you have, but oh Matthew…”_ Lester’s voice turns reverent.  “ _The things you can do. What you must experience, every day. It’s such a privilege, to gain this insight into you. How strong you must be, to go about every day as though you aren’t, you aren’t a god amongst men when even without your sight you can see everything.”_

There’s a noise in the background that Matt can’t make out . Low pitched, continuous. It sets Matt’s teeth on edge, makes his ears feel itchy.

“ _Franklin’s just the gift that keeps on giving, you know,”_ Lester carries on.  “ _Every day, I learn more. I’ve got him wearing wool today, and he just won’t settle, so I’ve no idea how you manage. Do you wear a lot of silk? You must do, it looks so terribly uncomfortable to wear normal clothes. And ooh… I’ve finally figured out how sensitive your hearing is. I’ve been practising you see. Playing one continuous sound at different volumes, poor Franklin hasn’t had a wink of sleep for.. well, days now… but his hearing’s just so delicate at the moment, the poor lamb. And he cries so prettily. Wait, I’ll give you a listen, hang on.”_

The noise suddenly gets louder, a one-tone klaxon blaring out at an agonising volume.

In the background, Foggy makes an animal wail through a shredded throat, and Matt has to pause the tape to sob soundlessly into his own hands.

\--

The next few recordings takes him nearly a week to work through, stopping and starting. He can’t bear to listen to it for long. Even then, he has other things he needs to be focusing on right now. Lester is not his priority any more.

Lester sometimes just chats away about his plans for the future. How he and Matt will destroy each other, how that moment is worth everything to him, how he dreams about it.  Sometimes he narrates little sensory experiments he’s trying. Once, he narrates making a curry of all things, bringing a small camping stove and pot into the brig where he’s holding his prisoner. Matt can imagine how much Foggy’s eyes sting, how the spices choke the back of his throat, coat his tongue and nose and make him gag. How from the sound of it, Foggy’s so out of it he barely knows what’s being done to him, staring out and seeing nothing, thrashing and confused and  wondering why the world hurts so much in the dark.

Matt slams his fist so hard into the table that he’s still picking splinters out when Karen comes over later.

\--

“How is he?” she asks, settling her coat on the rack and shuffling out of her heels and into her slippers. She pauses when she catches Matt sitting on the sofa, beer already in hand despite the early hour.

 “How do you think?” Matt says sharply, and she doesn’t rise to his anger. Instead, she grabs her own bottle from the fridge and joins him.

“We were talking,” Matt says after they’ve sat in silence for a while.  “I was trying to tell him that his blindness won’t be the disability he thinks it is. That I can teach him, help him, show him how to use what that man did and  turn it into something better.” Matt takes another gulp. “I sounded just like Stick.”

“Stick wanted you as a weapon,” Karen says. “You just want to help your friend. It’s not the same, Matt.”

“The worst thing is that Stick honestly helped me,” Matt swings his bottle from his fingers in lazy circles. It’s nearly empty. “What he did, it wasn’t right, and I know that, but I only got this far because of him. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t found me.  But I don’t know how I’m supposed to help without repeating what Stick taught me. And I don’t want to push – I don’t want to hurt him, not after everything else…”

“You won’t,” Karen says quickly, and she sets her beer down by her feet and puts her hand up against Matt’s, tightening her grip reassuringly when Matt lets her slot their palms together. “I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but…. Stick wanted you to fight. You just want Foggy to do more than just survive. You’ve got to remember that difference. That’s how you’ll help.”

\--

Sometimes the tape is left to record after Lester has left the room.   _A little added extra,_ that bastard calls them. If anything, they’re worse than listening to him catalogue whatever new thing he tried out that day.

It’s mostly just silence, the sound of waves arching up against the sides of the hull, the stripped out lower cabin of the boat tied up on the docks. His friend twitching at footsteps overhead, tensing up when they sound like Lester’s coming back. Gasping to try and reign in his panic. Sometimes he hears him drag himself across the floor, stumble up onto unsteady feet, try the lock. Once, that monster leaves it unlocked, and it’s heartbreaking to hear Foggy’s hopeful staggering steps cut short when he realises that Lester’s waiting right outside the brig to grab him by the arms with a “ _You’ll have to try harder than that, Franklin!”_ _,_  spinning him round childishly so Foggy is dizzy and disorientated, and pushing him right back into the room, faint and light-headed and unaware of where he is any more.

Sometimes, when the river’s up high or there’s been a heavy rainfall or even if Lester’s been particularly enthusiastic that day, Foggy just lies there. Swallowed up by the world, crushed by the noise. Crying quietly, and not even hearing himself over the sound of everything else.

Matt remembers how it was, those first weeks. How there was just too much of the world.

He remembers what it was like to be in the dark and afraid.

Matt wouldn’t have wanted that for anyone. But not Foggy. Never Foggy.

\--

It is during one of these extras that Matt finally hears himself.

A clattering bang and the squeak of hinges as he hurriedly unlocks the door, his knuckles numb from punching, something dark in him telling him he should have kept on punching, and Matt winces as he hears Foggy groan on the tape at the intrusion, curl up on himself.

On the other side, the other Matt is hearing a lone heartbeat begin to panic.

 “ _Foggy?!”_  he is calling too loudly. ” _Foggy, I’m here, oh thank Christ, Foggy.”_  A rustling as he puts his hands on him, fabrics rubbing against fabrics as he checks for injuries, bruising, skirting up with trembling fingers to rub around the skin of Foggy’s eyes. The police reports had said the others were blinded. Matt had had nightmares about hideous sockets and bloody rents marring Foggy’s face. There’s not a scratch, yet this other Matt, this ignorant Matt, he doesn’t understand yet how much damage has been done.  “ _It’s ok buddy, let’s take you home._ ”

 “… _too loud,”_  Foggy croaks finally. Matt remembers hands grasping out to grab him, trying to find somewhere to hold on to.  “ _Matty, please, it’s too loud._ ”

 “ _What is?”_  the other Matt asks, and he still doesn’t get it, still hasn’t realised.  “ _What’s too loud?”_

  _“Everything,”_  Foggy chokes, and Matt turns the tape off. He remembers how the rest of it goes anyway.

\--

“You should burn those tapes,” Karen had said to him. “They aren’t what’s important any more. Foggy is, and you’ve got to be there for him, Matt. You’ve got to be the one who helps him through this.”

Matt’s been thinking a lot about his past these days. Thoughts he doesn’t often come back to for obvious reasons. About how the bumps on his new books were meaningless gibberish at first, how his fingertips hurt after a long frustrating day trying to struggle his way through the simplest of paragraphs. About his earliest unsteady steps, clutching his dad’s arm tightly, more shuffling than walking, half expecting to meet a wall every time.

About how an old man told him he was special and then tried to turn him into a solider.

Matt doesn’t want to make the same mistakes.

He crushes the tapes underfoot and throws the whole lot into the trash.

After that’s done, he lets himself into his room with slow, careful steps.

“It’s me,” he telegraphs his entrance.

“Of course it is,” a tired voice replies. “You just can’t stay away.”

Matt barely sits down before a hand flutters out to nudge against his arm, steadying itself there with a loose hold.

“You have that leftover pizza for breakfast?”

“I just can’t get away with anything now, can I?” He tries for lightness and it works, Foggy making an amused hum.

“Not now,  buddy. I’m on to you.”

“Alright then, hotshot. Let’s see how much better you are today.” Matt removes his hand from Foggy’s grip and holds it up at the level of his head, palm raised as though he’s being sworn in. “Remember what I said about body heat and air vibrations, yeah? Now, try and give me a high five.”

Foggy still jerks at sirens, jumping when someone else in the building makes an unexpected noise, and he’ll barely leave the house. He’s still not used to using his cane, gets easily annoyed at how slowly he reads braille, and he’ll wake up in the middle of the night and won’t remember for a moment why it’s so dark.

He finds Matt’s hand three times out of five this time. He’ll get better in time. Matt will show him how.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Foggy gets kidnapped by Bullseye and he uses him for his experiments to try and copy Matt's abilities.


End file.
